"I know why you've come... they've sent you to bring me back, but that cannot happen.."

Friday, February 6, 2009

I've noticed this twice on the forums, in General and in Raids & Dungeons. A request that 10-man loot be equivalent to 25-man loot.

First you have to go on the premise 10-mans are as difficult as 25-man dungeons. I cannot speak from personal experience, but from what I've read 10-man Sartharion + 3 drakes is harder that its 25-man counterpart. One encounter isn't enough to support giving a 10-man boss the same loot table as a 25.

Just as Blizzard decided to decrease from 40 to 25. The argument is more people cause more complexity. And this I agree. How often have you beat an encounter because of less people than more. It happens. The oft quoted "herding more cats" is mentioned when discussing why larger raids are harder. It's quoted because it's true.

Also don't forget, if there is a instance tuned for 5 or 10 you start to have to make it workable for a variety of specs. You end up having to water it down so Joe 'n Friends can down it with whatever class mix they decide to have. If they tuned it tightly to make it rough going, many of these close knit group of friends simply would not have the necessary elements needed.

What I found most interesting is a few people saying they should just get rid of 25-mans altogether. But they didn't really give a reason why. To me it sounds like some players want their 10-man achievement to be the pinnacle of the game. Which makes them no better than the elitists they despise.

What happened to smaller groups just want to see content?

It quickly goes back to why do you need 25-man loot if you are only willing and/or able to tackle 10-man instances? I remember when I had decided to take things more casual I knew I wouldn't be able to have access to the best loot anymore. It seemed fair to me.

4
comments:

While I think removing 25s from the game altogether is a little extreme, there are many more examples of fights that - assuming Blizzard intends 10 vs. 25 to be merely a raid size and not a difficulty setting - are harder in 10s. And it's not just one fight even in the current endgame, even if the differences are hard to discern when it's all so easy right now. Gluth, Malygos, Grobbulus, aren't 'hard', but they often take more creativity and less room for error in their small-raid counterparts, based on the design of the fight.

Consider healing Sapphiron in 10 man (2 healers) vs. 25 (7 healers). The "100 club" achievement is completely trivial in 25 man but can be tricky depending on the healers you have in a 10, especially when those healers have to decurse in addition to healing a tank who's being hit pretty hard and a raid that's taking constant damage.

I think what most 10-man raiders would prefer is to be on equal footing to 25s, or at least, for fights that ARE of equal difficulty to give equal loot. Assuming Blizzard did their tuning right, it follows there is no reason for the loot to be disparate.

Especially considering the "hard-mode" encounters, the granddaddy of which was the ZA bear run. There's nothing casual about that run. I knew guilds who could clear BT who couldn't find 10 people coordinated and focused enough to do this "casual" 10-man time trial. It's not about being casual, it's about being accessible. It's possible for 10 players to form a ZA raid group relatively easily, but being coordinated enough to beat the timer took effort, practice, and dedication. An ideal challenge for a smaller group.

I'd be content with the hard-modes giving equal loot, because those are about raid stacking, which in a 10-man means going for a melee-heavy or caster-heavy makeup. It's not casual, it's not easy, and there's no good reason those encounters at least shouldn't give gear on par w/ their 25-man bretheren.

The problem with the current system is that the game is socially stacked against the idea of a hardcore 10-man raiding guild. You get inferior loot ergo you must be inferior players. The 25s are called "heroic". If it's a matter of playstyle choice, you shouldn't need to grow your raid group 150% to be taken seriously if you're a good raider in 10s.

Not to mention that there are 10-man achievements that are practically impossible with only 10-man gear (Sarth+3D), which makes the entire option feel unfinished. And the biggest problem of all.

Well Blizzard designed the game with the idea of having 25 man raids -- providing some incentive to play them seems logical. If you could solo a dungeon and get the same loot as you would clearing it with a 25 man, you probably would for convenience.